Internal works begun!!

Last Monday, much to our pleasant surprise, the DA for the alterations was approved (we had been told 8weeks, but it was only 3! bonus!) and so we began internal works. Originally, we had been looking at another builder, but when they failed to give me a quote/estimate after 5 weeks, I thought.. here we go, someone else who'll put us on the back burner... so I've enlisted Bernie Maloney, our trusty old guy.. he did our reno's at Berkeley Vale for us and is very accomodating and good. So these firt pics are from the kitchen area looking to the (future) living room. It was filled up by the third bedroom and made no use of the best (northern) areas of the house. So its coming down. Last Thursday, Berney started demolishing and (with my help) he is now already ready for putting up the new wall for the main bedroom and the laundry... except that the wall isn't exactly new. I wanted to recycle every bit of timber from the house, so we are building all the new stuff with the old... I've just been spending a lot of time over the weekend pulling out nails from the old hardwood... very tough job... Because of the labour involved and the increased difficulty of putting it back up, its more costly in labour, but we can save a little bit on not buying the new timber (which is pretty cheap ~$1.2 p/m for structural pine). I've stayed in the house overnight in my swag.. it was just like camping!